This article is a review of ANGELICA.

Seen at the Berlin International Film Festival 2015. (For more information, click here.)

“You must find your pleasure elsewhere,” doctor

Writer-director Mitchell Lichtenstein returns to sexuality and the horror genre. His TEETH was a revenge/morality tale concerning how men can treat young women. ANGELICA has venereal repression on its mind, using Victorian Britain as the canvas to paint. Hamstringing proceedings is the lack of real scares or any kind of tension building. Hysterical, dialled up acting can’t compensate for clumsy filmmaking.

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Remember in BACKDRAFT how Kurt Russell played both father and son? Such vexatious casting choice is not uncommon enough, and Jena Malone is utilised to similar effect, playing the titular woman in adult form and her mother Constance, who takes up the majority of the screen time. Called from a stage encore, by family friend Anne Montague (Janet McTeer), theatre actress Angelica is told her bedridden mother, Constance (Glynnis O’Connor), has urgent need of her. Fearing imminent passing, daughter and parent meet and Constance desires to unburden herself of a secret, which we will eventually discern has cut a swathe through her psyche for decades. Mysterious absence of Angelica’s father is the subject of the forthcoming revelation.

Opening credits have the newly invented photograph used to reveal repeatedly ghostly apparitions on development. Setting the spectral tone, it is far from unnerving and a bit laughable. Only at the coda will the device be returned to.

Zooming back in time, we get to the courtship of stationer Constance (Malone) by Dr Joseph Barton (Ed Stoppard). Wooing conversation involves such gems as the difference between the British and apes – meant to suggest humankind’s animalistic tendencies suppressed behind stiff upper lips and starched collars. Thinly veiled discourse is continually artless and weighted down by heavy stares. Acting is not at fault; the dialogue required several more drafts.

Whirlwind romance, lacking substantial chemistry, has the newly-weds expecting and Constance almost dying on birthing Angelica. Effective contraception a long time in the future, physician warning comes in the form of marital abstinence (with Joseph to get his jollies elsewhere), so that another dangerous pregnancy can be avoided. Wedlock as the societal acceptable method of consummation leaves the couple frustrated. (Kudos at least to husband for remaining true.)Angelica becomes Constance’s complete focus, while Joseph works at his secretive laboratory - family not permitted to visit. Ghostly apparitions start to manifest to the wife and daughter at night, to the dwindling patience of patriarch. Mildly disturbing, lustful sketchy phantoms has the audience question which spousal mind they may be emanating from, if not both.Tonal oscillation is neither scary nor funny nor emotional enough. BELLE DU JOUR meets THE SIXTH SENSE this isn’t.

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